Russia, Slavdom and the Entente in the foreign policy forecasts of the official and pro-government press of the East of Russia during the Civil War (November 1918 - December 1919)

The image of the Allies represented by the Entente countries and Slavic peoples took a special place in the content of the official rhetoric of the government of A.V. Kolchak. One of the ways of formation of this image was forecasting of the future. Models of the future are of interest primarily because they reflected the hopes and fears, expectations and ideals of their creators. The subjects of this work are predictions in the field of foreign policy concerning, above all, relations of Russia with the Slavic states and the Entente powers. The interest towards the Entente countries was caused by the hopes of the leaders of anti-Bolshevik forces to receive assistance and admission from the Allies. Close attention to the newly formed Slavic states reflected the aspiration to the strengthening of Russian influence in the Slavic world that largely was due to the task of restoring the country's grandeur - one of the key ideas in the propaganda of the Whites. The aim of the study is to identify the role of prognostic texts about the fate of Russia, the Entente countries and the Slavic States in the official discourse of the government of A.V. Kolchak by considering the features of the content of the models of future presented in these texts and by defining the sphere of duties that these models were designed to solve. The main sources were the official and pro-government periodical press, as well as archival documents of the Foreign Ministry of the Omsk Government. Then, what kind of challenges in the field of advocacy activities did forecasting make it possible to perform? First of all, it is the legitimation of the authority of the government of A.V. Kolchak and the creation of its positive image. Forecasts, in which Russia was positioned as a "Unified, Great and Undivided", as the leader of the future Commonwealth of Slavic States, by default assumed the White domination and implementation of their program. Therefore, there was no doubt in the legitimacy of the authorities of the Supreme Ruler and the correctness of his current domestic and foreign policy. In the second place, modeling assessed phenomena and events, which ultimately allowed to develop a certain system of values and try to impose it on the reader. The last thing, forecasting was the way of consolidation of the society. Reasoning about the future strong Union of Russia and the Slavic countries reflects active attempts of Omsk ideologues to build a supranational identity, based on the ideas of pan-Slavism. Moreover, if initially the Slavs were opposed to the "German-Bolsheviks", with the rising discontent with Western Allies, because of their non-recognition of the government of A.V. Kolchak, Russia as the leader of the Slavic world came to be regarded as some kind of an alternative to the Western world. Thus, forecasting the future formed images of enemies and friends, against which it was also possible to build one's own perfect image.

Keywords

Authors

References